With millions across the UK logging in every day, Facebook provides an ideal platform for promoting your practice – and setting up a business page is free!

Why have a Facebook page?

Potential numbers aside, there are many benefits to setting up a Facebook Page for your therapy business. Most importantly, it is likely to pop up in Google searches if clients look for the name of your business. You can include all of the photos, information and text you would on your website (using original words), giving potential clients everything they need to make the decision to contact you. Be sure to add words to your descriptions that clients are likely to search for, such as your branch of therapy and location.

The other great benefit to a Facebook page is that it offers immediate engagement with people who like your page, rather than a static website. The status feature (where you can post updates that appear in your followers’ newsfeeds) means that you can keep them up to date with your practice’s goings on, in addition to engaging them directly. For example, you could pose a “question of the day” for them to respond to, or regular health tips and advice.

Facebook Pages allows people to review you and your services, post questions to your wall and send you private messages with enquiries, opening up a wealth of potential contacts. You can also search for other therapists and “like” their page, making it a useful tool for business networking.

The handy Facebook Pages app means that updating your page on the go is quick, easy, and allows you to be conscious of your business’ PR and marketing wherever you are, with little effort. Page Insights are also available, letting you know which posts receive the most “likes” and shares, how many people have liked your page recently and so on. All helpful tools to plan your marketing strategy.

Promoting your page

Once you’ve set up your page, and added a few initial posts so it’s not ‘empty’, you can share your new page with your existing Facebook friends via your personal Facebook account. You can choose individuals, or send mass invitations to “like” your page. Alternatively, you can share the link to your new page in your personal status updates. You can also add a link to your new page on your existing website (and vice versa), on business cards and at the bottom of emails you send to clients or in response to enquiries.

How to get started

New to Facebook? Not a problem! You don’t necessarily need a personal profile in order to set up a page. Facebook’s help centre is incredibly useful, written in user friendly terms, and gives you everything you need to get started, including a “Create Page” link.

To get started, visit https://www.facebook.com/business/overview.

Do you have a Facebook page for your practice? Why not share it here and we’ll follow you. Don’t forget to follow the Private Practice Hub page!